SF City Hall Press Conference

COMMUNICATING RACIAL JUSTICE: The Budget for Families Campaign

Overview
The 2000 census was a wake-up call for Coleman Advocates for Children and Youth.  The census showed that San Francisco has the smallest child population of any major city in the nation. For an organization with a 30-year history of improving the lives of children and youth in San Francisco, this finding was a call to action.

Coleman Advocates decided it was time to apply its citywide advocacy power to organizing low-income families of color against gentrification and displacement. As part of a long-term campaign to keep families in San Francisco, Coleman and a coalition of advocacy and service partners crafted a short-term aggressive campaign to win immediate gains for low-income families. The “Budget 4 Families” coaliton demanded and won $10 million dollars for job training and placement in living wage jobs, quality childcare, violence prevention services, and assistance to keep families in affordable housing.

Steps to Success

• Coleman conducted strategic research that centered race.  Coleman’s first successful step in communicating for racial justice was their report, “Families Struggling to Stay: Why Families Are Leaving San Francisco and What Can be Done.” Through this in-depth report, Coleman framed current conditions as a crisis for low-income families of color. Coleman found:
  
  
• Compared to the rest of the city, San Francisco’s families are disproportionately low and moderate income, and are people of color. Significant proportions of the city’s families are recent immigrants, while many Latino and Asian families have lived in the city for generations. After white families, the second largest group of families are Asian, primarily Chinese. The poorest neighborhoods of the city have the highest concentrations of children, and while African American children have the highest rates of poverty, the greatest number of poor children are Chinese.

• Coleman crafted a visionary frame. Coleman asked the YMC to support its media strategy development. YMC began by leading Coleman through a strategic discussion about  the current problem, current assumptions, and barriers they would face in communicating about this issue. YMC suggested they ground their communications work in a visionary, solutions-based frame. Coleman’s “SF families stand our ground” frame centered the power of families organizing to transform a city at a crossroads. Decision-makers and media-makers were unable to disagree with such a powerful and unifying vision.
• Coleman positioned families of color as the majority vs. a clear public target: Mayor Gavin Newsom.  YMC conducted a series of discussions with Coleman to craft a strategic story that conveyed their frame. While Mayor Gavin Newsom had gained notoriety as a supporter of gay marriage, as a harsh crusader against homelessness, and as a dubious friend of labor by supporting striking hotel workers, he had not done much in his tenure to support poor and low-income communities of color in San Francisco. Coleman told a story of thousands of families of color in the Southeastern neighborhoods of the city, neglected by a Mayor beholden to corporate development interests and his own public image. In doing so, Coleman effectively positioned families of color as unsung heroes in need of support, and piggybacked off the media’s daily attention to “golden boy” Mayor Newsom.
• Coleman designed powerful base-building media events. Coleman executed two creative tactics that cultivated media leaders, mobilized their base, and pressured decision-makers through creative communications and people power.  The first was a press conference on the steps of city hall to launch their Budget 4 Families platform. The press conference featured remarkable visuals that captured the problem, solution and vision — suitcases resting on the steps of city hall represented families leaving San Francisco, a red carpet leading to the doors of city hall implied the Mayor could “roll out the red carpet” for these same families by invest more money in needed services. The second was a Stand Up for Families rally attended by more than 800 people. The rally featured family-oriented services including games, vendors, booths and speakers. Coleman leaders threatened with displacement delivered moving testimonials on their struggle to stay in SF. Both these events earned media coverage on every major TV network, the San Francisco Chronicle, and numerous community and ethnic outlets.  
• Coleman conducted insider mass-based advocacy to sway the Board of Supervisors.  By this point, the Mayor and the Board of Supervisors were already responding to Coleman’s demands. But to seal the deal, Coleman organized a “family sit-in” during the last budget hearing at city hall. More than 150 people packed into the room pressuring the Board of Supervisors to pass Coleman’s proposed $10 million budget. Coleman director N’Tanya Lee describes the scene:

We did it “family style,” with pizza, juice and games for the kids and a welcoming, bilingual organizing crew for the ethnically diverse crowd. Volunteers got on their knees and played bingo with the kids. It was more like a family-friendly house party than a budget meeting, and low income families finally felt ownership of their own City Hall.

Impacts
Over a short but intense seven months, Coleman and the Budget 4 Families coalition conducted creative media work, organized 1,000 people to win $10 million for essential violence prevention, childcare, affordable housing and job training services. And they won.

With vision, effective organizing and a creative communications strategy unafraid to center the problems and power of communities of color, Coleman and their allies won a life-and-death victory for low-income families in SF. Coleman is now preparing to launch a long-term campaign to improve public education and secure more quality affordable housing in San Francisco. They are prioritizing communications by hiring a development and communications director to resource their ongoing struggle for racial justice in San Francisco and beyond.

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